Lamar Public Library

This is the tale of family, memory, love, and living told by 14-year-old Susie Salmon, who is already in heaven. Through the voice of a precocious teenage girl, Susie relates the awful events of her death and builds out of her family's grief a hopeful and joyful story

A novella and stories. In the novella, Rustler Roundup, the lone hero outwits a gang of cattle rustlers, Desperate Men is on a prison break during an earthquake, and in the title tale a cowboy finds women more of a challenge than a cattle drive.

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. Their first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway,...

Four high school students face off against a soul-stealing beast that has been making young people disappear their small Ontario, Canada, town for centuries.

Painter Elaine Risley, pushing fifty, returns to Toronto for a retrospective of her celebrated work. While there she takes time to confront her past.

"Not all the folks who roamed the Old West were cowhands, rustlers, or cardsharps. And they certainly weren't all heroes. Give-a-Damn Jones, a free-spirited itinerant typographer, hates his nickname almost as much as the rumors spread about him. He's a kind soul who keeps finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's what happened in Box Elder, a small Montana town. Tensions are running high, and anything -- or anyone -- could be the...

When a medical procedure goes horribly wrong and famous actor Ralph Meier winds up dead, Dr. Marc Schlosser needs to come up with some answers. After all, reputation is everything in this business. Personally, hes not exactly upset that Ralph is gone, but as a high-profile doctor to the stars, Marc can't hide from the truth forever. It all started the previous summer. Marc, his wife, and their two beautiful teenage daughters agreed to spend a week...

The 1950s are on the horizon, and Archer is in dire need of a fresh start after a nearly fatal detour in Poca City. So Archer hops on a bus and begins the long journey out west to California, where rumor has it there is money to be made for someone who's hard-working, lucky, a criminal, or all three. Along the way, Archer stops in Reno, where a stroke of fortune delivers him a wad of cash and an eye-popping blood-red 1939 Delahaye convertible, plus...

True love never dies-but it may need the helping hand of the Virgin Mary and the luck o' the Irish to survive in Rice's latest, effectively a sequel to last year's Sandcastles. Sister Bernadette Ignatius (the former Bernie Sullivan), Mother Superior at the coastal Connecticut Star of the Sea Academy, travels to Dublin with Tom Kelly, the academy's ombudsman, seeking James, the son they gave up over 20 years ago. In a parallel narrative set up in a...

When heartache and loss invade Karen Pierce's carefully ordered world, she is devastated. Her plans and dreams for the future seem distant and unattainable, and she is bound by a promise to care for two young adults who are struggling with a loss of their own. Continuing their journey north to the goldfields seems their only option, and Adrik Ivanov agrees to be their guide. With a late start and the constant threat of winter hastening their pace,...